1^   ^  UC-NRLF 

57   - 


Western  Hemisphere 

irx  the 

World  of  To-Morrow 


FRANKLIN  HENRY  GIDDING^ 


The  Western  Hemisphere  in  the 
World  of  To-Morrow 


The  Western  Hemisphere 

in  the 

World  of  To-Morrow 


By 
FRANKLIN  HENRY  GIDDINGS,  LL.  D. 

Professor  of  Sociology  and  the  History  of  Civili- 
zation in  Columbia  University 


New  York         Chicago        Toronto 

Fleming   H.  Revell  Company 
London  and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1915,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


*^^: 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  125  North  Wabash  Ave. 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  31  Paternoster  Square 
£dinbuigh:      iao    Princes    Street 


Preface 

IT  was  inconceivable  that  the  American 
nations  could  escape  their  share  of  loss 
and  suffering  caused  by  the  titanic  clash 
of  differing  civilizations  in  Europe,  and  it  is 
unthinkable  that  these  nations  are  not  to  play 
a  significant  part  in  the  reconstructed  world 
of  to-morrow.  It  is  well  worth  our  while  at 
the  present  moment  to  look  over  our  inherit- 
ance and  our  program. 

The  material  here  broken  up  for  the  read- 
er's convenience  into  short  chapters  was 
prepared  and  delivered  as  a  lecture,  under 
the  auspices  of  the  New  York  Peace  Society, 
at  -^Eolian  Hall,  New  York,  March  25,  1915. 

F.  H.  G. 

New  York, 
July,  igis. 


345215 


Contents 

I.  The  Mingling  Place  of  Races  .        .      9 

II.  Inheritance  and  Experiment    .        .21 

III.  The  Discovery  of  Social  Efficiency     34 

IV.  Getting  On  Without  Kings     .        .41 

V.  Trying  Out  a  World  Society  .        .    46 


THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OF  RACES 

AN  instinct  as  old  as  life  compels  us  to 
speculate  upon  the  world  of  to-mor- 
row. Our  forecast  may  go  astray, 
and  the  plans  that  we  make  for  posterity 
may  serve  only  to  amuse  the  children  of  our 
children  ;  but  that  does  not  matter.  Nature 
sacrifices  the  individual  to  the  race,  and  the 
individual  man  sacrifices  himself,  hoping  that 
his  state  or  nation  may  live.  It  is  the  race- 
perpetuating  instinct,  reinforced  by  the  na- 
tion-defending habit,  which  projects  our 
thought  into  the  future,  and  if  we  neither 
shape  nor  understand  the  future  to  such  an 
extent  as  we  imagine,  we  at  least  influence 
the  present  by  our  outlooking  vision.  For 
the  world  of  to-day  is  a  product  not  only 
of  the  past.  In  a  measure  it  is  controlled 
and  shaped  by  our  interest  in  the  world  of 
to-morrow. 

When  we  undertake  to  explain  the  world 
of  to-day  by  cosmic   evolution  and  by  his- 
tory, we  discover  that  one  part  of  our  present 
world,  the  Western  Hemisphere,  is  a  creation 
9 


10    THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OF  EACES 

of  the  past  in  a  special  sense.  Its  features 
are  unique,  its  character  is  distinctive.  And 
when  we  attempt  to  picture  the  world  of  to- 
morrow, we  find  ourselves  influenced  by  a 
conviction  that  this  highly  individualized 
Western  Hemisphere  is  to  play  an  important 
part.  Reacting  upon  our  inheritance  from 
the  past  and  upon  our  interests  of  to-day, 
this  conviction  is  a  factor  of  no  mean  im- 
portance in  our  politics  here  and  now. 

The  Eastern  Hemisphere  is  the  great  land 
area  of  the  earth.  The  Western  Hemi- 
sphere is  the  vast  "glad  water  of  the  dark 
blue  sea  "  where  Byron's  pirate  roamed  and 
Kipling's  Three  Decker  drifted.  It  is  given 
over  now  to  other  uses— which  the  pirate 
foresaw  and  the  adventurer  lived  to  lament 
— because  it  is  divided  into  oceans  by  a 
land  strip  from  the  Arctic  to  the  Antarctic 
Sea.  Contracted  near  the  middle  point  to  a 
narrow  isthmus,  this  island,  as  long  as  the 
world,  includes  the  two  continents  of  North 
and  South  America.  Cut  through  by  the 
Panama  Canal,  the  isthmus  has  become  a 
focal  point  upon  which  converge  routes  of 
communication  from  every  port  of  the  eastern 
and  the  western  coasts  of  both  Americas, 
from  every  port  of  the  Asian  or  eastern 
coasts  of  the  Eastern  Hemisphere,  and  from 


THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OP  EACES    11 

every  port  of  the  western  or  European  coasts. 
There  meet  the  flag-bearing  liners  of  the 
nations,  as  heretofore  individual  merchants 
have  met  at  the  gates  of  the  cities,  one  after 
another  supreme,  from  Babylon  to  New  York. 
No  great  effort  of  imagination  is  needed  to 
see  that  the  American  continents  so  situated 
must  receive  the  impact  of  more  than  ocean 
waves  from  both  sides  of  the  world.  These 
impacts  from  east  and  west  alike,  of  which 
we  are  becoming  conscious  to-day,  began 
millions  of  years  ago.  The  vegetation  and 
the  animal  life  of  both  North  and  South 
America  are  a  medley  of  species  to  which 
both  Asia  and  Europe  have  contributed. 
The  human  population  of  these  continents 
probably  is  derived  entirely  from  the  Eastern 
Hemisphere,  but  it  came  by  more  than  one 
route.  Possibly  in  very  early  ages  of  dis- 
persion, a  primitive  folk  made  its  way  by  the 
islands  of  the  southern  seas  to  the  western 
coasts  of  South  America.  Perhaps  before 
the  ice  age  in  Europe  the  flint-chipping  peo- 
ple of  the  valleys  of  the  Seine  and  of  the 
Thames  made  their  way  across  Iceland  and 
Greenland  into  eastern  North  America. 
Much  later  probably  came  the  stream  of  im- 
migration from  the  northern  Asian  coasts  by 
way  of  Behring  Straits  to  the  western  coasts 


12    THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OP  EACES 

and  interior  valleys  west  and  east  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains. 

The  merest  mention  of  facts  like  these  is 
enough  to  show  that  from  early  geological 
time  and  by  reason  of  its  geographical  posi- 
tion, the  land  area  of  the  Western  Hemi- 
sphere was  predestined  to  be  the  home  and 
mingling  place  of  varied  forms  of  life,  above 
all  of  many  racial  and  minor  ethnic  varieties 
of  the  human  race.  By  no  possibility  could 
North  and  South  America  be  like  north- 
eastern Asia,  the  home  of  a  great  homoge- 
neous stock  or  even,  like  the  Baltic  regions  of 
Europe,  the  home  of  a  stock  approximately 
homogeneous. 

The  accidents  of  history — if  history  includes 
accidents — might  conceivably  have  worked 
against  the  influences  of  geographical  posi- 
tion, but  they  did  not.  They  might  have 
sent  to  these  continents  explorers  and  colo- 
nists of  one  variety  only  of  the  miscellaneous 
white  stocks  that  make  up  Europe's  popula- 
tion. Had  Portugal  been  a  sovereign  people 
of  many  millions,  she  might  have  followed 
up  her  initial  advantage  and  held  the  new 
world  as  a  part  of  her  imperial  domain. 
Spain  in  turn,  or  Holland,  or  France,  might 
have  succeeded  to  the  control  of  all  the 
Americas  if   in   the   days  of  their  greatness 


THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OP  RACES    13 

they  had  been  nations  in  the  modern  sense 
of  the  word  with  capital  and  population  to 
spare.  But  the  day  of  the  populous  and 
economically  developed  nation  had  not  then 
arrived,  and  therefore  Portugal,  Spain  and 
France,  top-heavy  military  enterprises,  in 
turn  asserting  authority  in  the  Western 
Hemisphere,  sent  only  small  companies  of 
their  white  subjects  to  exploit  its  treasures. 
By  comparison  with  the  later  English  col- 
onization these  early  contributions  of  white 
blood  to  a  future  American  population 
seem  insignificant,  and  often  have  been 
described  as  negligible.  They  were  not 
negligible  in  fact.  They  ^ere  important 
enough  to  make  Portuguese  nd  Spanish  the 
languages  of  one  of  the  continents,  to  make 
Spanish  and  French  traditions  a  factor  in  the 
mental  evolution  of  one-half  of  the  other. 

The  English  folk  who  in  their  turn  came  to 
North  America  were  true  colonists,  as  the 
historians  are  fond  of  saying,  but  it  is  easier 
to  overestimate  their  numbers  than  it  is  to 
exaggerate  their  influence.  If  it  were  possi- 
ble to  determine  how  many  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  United  States  and  the  Canadas  are 
to-day  predominantly  English  in  blood  and 
how  many  are  predominantly  French,  we 
might  be  surprised.    It  is  true  that  the  two  and 


14    THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OP  EACES 

a  quarter  millions  of  the  Province  of  Quebec 
look  small  by  comparison  with  the  twenty-six 
millions  of  the  North  Atlantic  section  of  the 
United  States,  not  to  mention  the  population 
of  the  rest  of  North  America  north  of  the  Rio 
Grande.  It  is  true  that  the  Huguenot  im- 
migration to  the  middle  and  southern  states 
in  the  last  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century 
was  inconsiderable  by  comparison  with  the 
stream  of  English  colonists  into  Massachu- 
setts and  Virginia,  but  we  have  no  means  of 
knowing  what  was  the  relative  fecundity  of 
the  French  and  the  English  stocks  in  the 
hundred  years  before  our  first  national  census 
was  taken.  We  can  only  say  that  the  strain 
of  French  blood  was  probably  larger  in  1 789 
than  the  enumerations  show. 

Dutch,  Swedes,  Scotch,  Irish  and  Palati- 
nate Germans  also  were  considerable  elements 
in  our  population  before  the  opening  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

If  then  no  later  immigration  movement 
had  influenced  the  white  population  of  North 
America  after  1800,  it  yet  would  have  been 
much  too  miscellaneous  then  and  now  to  be 
described  as  a  homogeneous  stock. 

As  all  the  world  knows,  the  later  immigra- 
tion movement,  beginning  about  1820  and 
continuing  until  the  outbreak  of  the  European 


THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OF  RACES    15 

war  now  in  progress,  has  brought  to  the 
United  States  an  Irish  population  comparable 
with  the  population  of  Ireland ;  German  and 
Scandinavian  populations  large  enough  to 
constitute  great  nations ;  and,  latterly,  millions 
of  Italians,  Hungarians,  Slavs  and  other  ethnic 
stocks  from  southeastern  Europe.  To-day 
the  white  population  of  North  America  is  as 
variegated  as  the  white  population  of  Europe 
itself. 

The  accidents  of  history,  however,  did  not 
end  with  migrations  that  commingled  all 
kinds  of  white  blood  in  America,  and  to  ac- 
cidents were  added  perversities.  The  most 
remarkable  action  of  man's  deliberate  choice 
that  history  records  introduced  upon  both  of 
these  continents  a  racial  element  which  in  the 
natural  course  of  human  migration  might 
never  have  found  its  way  hither.  When  the 
white  man  had  exterminated  entire  tribal 
groups  of  red  men,  and  had  driven  others  to 
reservations,  and  might  therefore  have  had 
a  continent  to  himself,  he  purposely  introduced 
through  African  slavery  a  race  more  unlike 
himself  than  the  red  man  was,  and  which  has 
multiplied  until  now  it  numbers  in  the  United 
States  alone  more  than  ten  millions  of  indi- 
viduals. 

If  the  miscellaneousness  of  our  white  popu- 


16    THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OF  RACES 

lation  and  the  introduction  here  of  a  black 
population  to  live  side  by  side  with  the  white 
can  by  any  stretching  of  the  meaning  of 
words  be  called  accidents  and  perversities  of 
history,  the  remaining  features  of  our  popu- 
lation phenomena  cannot  be.  They  are  in- 
evitable consequences  of  our  geographical 
position  already  described. 

An  aboriginal  or  so-called  Indian  stock 
developed  here  from  elements  both  European 
and  Asian,  immensely  ancient  and  later,  was 
not  destined  to  disappear,  leaving  no  trace, 
as  was  confidently  prophesied  at  the  moment 
of  white  conquest  and  occupation.  Not  only 
is  the  Indian  factor  the  basis  of  the  South 
American,  Central  American  and  Mexican 
population  at  the  present  hour,  but  in  the 
United  States  and  in  Canada  it  persists  and 
probably  will  increase.  In  Canada,  it  is 
much  mixed  with  white  blood,  in  the  United 
States  less  so,  but  in  Canada  and  the  United 
States  together,  if  we  may  believe  the  eth- 
nologists and  the  census  experts,  there  are 
probably  now  more  individuals  of  pure  or 
mixed  Indian  blood  than  lived  on  this  conti- 
nent at  the  time  of  its  discovery  by  Columbus. 

Finally,  as  one  more  inevitable  incident  in 
the  anthropological  evolution  of  mankind, 
must  we  describe  the  coming  in  these  later 


THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OP  EACBS    17 

decades  of  a  new  and  civilized  Asian  element 
to  our  western  coasts.  Chinese  and  Japanese 
immigration  has  been  restricted  by  treaty 
and  legislation,  but  not  prevented.  The  in- 
creasing pressure  of  population  in  the  Asian 
empires  will  beyond  doubt  continue  to  pro- 
duce a  succession  of  migratory  movements, 
from  the  impact  of  which  we  cannot  expect 
altogether  to  escape,  however  strictly  we 
deal,  by  governmental  or  other  action,  with 
the  problem  presented. 

To  sum  up  our  observations  at  this  point, 
it  appears  that  the  continents  of  the  Western 
Hemisphere  were  predestined  by  causes  that 
go  back  to  early  geological  eras  to  be  the 
meeting  and  mingling  places  of  all  the  races 
and  nationalities  of  the  earth.  In  other  areas 
relatively  homogeneous  stocks  have  devel- 
oped and  may  continue  to  dwell ;  but  in 
North  and  South  America  there  will  be  pro- 
duced a  population  in  composition  and  char- 
acteristics different  from  any  existing  else- 
where. It  will  be  a  hybrid  of  elements  more 
diverse  than  have  hitherto  been  combined. 
Generations  far  in  the  future  will  know,  what 
it  is  impossible  for  us  to  know,  or  with  much 
confidence  to  predict,  whether  the  qualities 
of  such  a  race  will  be  on  the  whole  inferior 
or  all  in  all  superior  to  the  qualities  of  the 


18    THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OP  EACES 

more  homogeneous  stocks  that  have  bred  in 
the  world  hitherto.  Biologists  and  anthro- 
pologists differ  in  opinion  upon  the  conse- 
quences of  extensive  admixture  of  parent 
stocks.  Generally  they  hold  that  very  close 
inbreeding  is  deleterious.  Generally  too  they 
believe  that  panmixia,  or  the  indiscriminate 
mingling  of  heredities,  also  makes  for  de- 
terioration. Within  what  limits  cross-breed- 
ing produces  stocks  that  with  adequate  sta- 
bility have  also  plasticity,  variability  and 
adaptiveness,  is  not  yet  determined. 

The  available  evidence  rather  strongly 
supports  the  presumption  that  hybrids  pro- 
duced by  the  crossing  of  varieties  much  alike 
are  vigorous,  adaptive  and  competent.  They 
produce  large  numbers  of  gifted  men  and 
achieve  noteworthy  things  in  politics,  in- 
dustry, invention,  science  and  art.  Quite 
different,  apparently,  are  hybrids  produced 
by  the  crossing  of  widely  dissimilar  varieties 
or  races.  These  often  show  incompetency 
or  worse  characteristics.  More  doubt,  how- 
ever, attaches  to  this  second  conclusion  than 
.o  the  one  about  the  excellence  of  the  similar- 
variety  hybrid.  Whether,  after  elimination 
of  weak  and  ineffective  crosses,  hybrids  of 
dissimilar  races  may  become  valuable  new 
varieties  is  for  practical  purposes  the  most 


THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OP  EACES    19 

important  question  of  anthropology.  The 
answer  to  it  will  be  given  by  American  evi- 
dence chiefly. 

However  this  last  matter  may  turn  out, 
there  is  one  big  and  reassuring  fact  to  which 
no  uncertainty  attaches.  We  cannot  say 
that  any  one  national  variety  of  the  Euro- 
pean white  race,  the  English  for  example,  is 
certainly  predominant  in  North  America — it 
is  not  predominant  in  the  Western  Hemi- 
sphere as  a  whole.  But  a  group  of  white 
stocks,  nearly  related  and  similar  in  funda- 
mental traits,  certainly  is  predominant 
throughout  the  vast  area  north  of  the  bound- 
ary line  between  Mexico  and  the  United 
States.  This  group  comprises  the  stocks 
from  the  British  Isles,  the  French,  the  Bel- 
gians, Germans,  Hollanders,  Danes  and 
Scandinavians,  the  peoples,  in  short,  of 
northwestern  Europe.  To  some  extent,  the 
people  in  process  of  evolution  from  the 
amalgamation  of  these  stocks  will  be  affected 
by  the  admixture  of  elements  from  southern 
and  eastern  Europe.  The  North  American 
population  therefore  will  be  a  product  of  the 
cross-breeding  of  all  the  varieties  of  the 
white  race,  Baltic,  Mediterranean,  Alpine  and 
Danubian.  There  is  every  reason  to  expect 
that  this  new  people  will  be  numerically  pre- 


20    THE  MINGLING  PLACE  OF  EACES 

ponderant  in  the  Western  Hemisphere.  For 
in  certain  regions  of  South  America  also,  the 
Argentine  for  example,  it  is  being  evolved  as 
in  the  United  States.  The  proportions  in 
which  the  factors  combine,  however,  are 
somewhat  different  in  the  southern  continent. 
On  the  whole  then,  it  is  reasonably  certain 
that  while  the  Western  Hemisphere  will  pres- 
ently exhibit  a  great  number  of  interesting 
hybrids  for  the  anthropologist  to  study,  the 
numerically  ascendant  and  controlling  popu- 
lation will  be  a  vigorous  and  gifted  people 
of  European  extraction. 


n 

INHERITANCE  AND  EXPERIMENT 

THUS  far  we  have  been  considering 
phenomena  of  heredity  as  they  are 
produced  in  the  Americas,  and  as 
they  probably  will  play  a  part  in  the  world 
of  to-morrow. 

Over  against  the  biological  facts  of  heredity 
and  interacting  with  them  in  social  evolution 
are  the  facts  of  habit,  of  acquisition,  the  social 
inheritance.  Hereditary  nature,  including 
instinctive  reactions  to  environment,  a  man 
is  born  with.  Instincts  are  his  race  equip- 
ment. His  habits  he  acquires  during  his 
own  short  lifetime,  beginning  in  early  in- 
fancy. He  learns  them.  Also  by  learning, 
including  activities  of  imagination  and  rea- 
soning he  acquires  a  fund  of  ideas.  These 
acquisitions,  however,  are  determined  for 
him  by  his  social  environment,  supplement- 
ing his  natural  or  geographical  environment. 
The  social  environment  in  turn  is  created  by 
historical  events,  supplemented  by  more  or 
less  extensive  and  varied  contacts  with  the 
peoples  of  other  parts  of  the  world. 
21 


22    INHEEITANCE  AND  EXPERIMENT 

The  geographical  situation  of  these  con- 
tinents has  therefore  been  significant  for  the 
mental  and  social  life  of  the  Western  Hemi- 
sphere, as  for  its  racial  character  and  quality. 

The  same  conditions  that  made  the  West- 
ern Hemisphere  the  meeting  and  the  min- 
gling place  of  races  and  nationalities  have 
made  it  the  assembling  ground  of  languages 
and  ideas,  and  of  those  complexes  of  ideas 
which  we  call  arts,  religions,  economic  enter- 
prises, political  theories  and  public  policies. 
Here  is  the  arena  of  struggle,  in  which 
languages,  ideas,  faiths  and  policies  contend 
on  a  scale  hitherto  unknown  and  unimagined, 
and  where,  little  by  little,  certain  languages 
win  supremacy  and  certain  ideas  become 
ascendant.  It  is  predominantly  these  mental 
and  moral  products  of  American  life  which 
seem  destined  to  exert  influence  upon  the 
world  of  to-morrow. 

Of  the  many  languages  that  have  found 
their  way  to  these  continents,  four,  namely 
Portuguese,  Spanish,  French  and  English, 
are  still  important.  Portuguese  and  French 
are  probably  destined  to  become  relatively 
unimportant.  The  long  rivalry  will  be  be- 
tween Spanish,  south  of  the  Rio  Grande,  and 
English,  north.  Whether  one  or  the  other 
of  these  tongues  will  in  the  far  future  give 


INHEEITANCE  AND  EXPEEIMENT    23 

way  before  the  other  no  wise  man  will  venture 
to  predict.  We  can  only  say  that  since  the 
Norman  conquest  of  England,  the  English 
language  has  made  its  way  into  various 
parts  of  the  world  with  a  persistency  and  an 
energy  unexampled.  It  is  spoken  now  by 
more  than  one  hundred  and  sixty  million 
persons.  That  its  supremacy  in  America 
may  make  it  the  world  language  of  the  future 
is  at  least  a  possibility. 

We  come  to  a  consideration  of  ideas  and 
complexes  of  ideas,  of  their  relative  influence 
and  probable  effect. 

America  was  discovered  by  Catholics  and 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  from  the  first 
made  diligent  use  of  its  new  opportunity. 
South  America,  Central  America  and  Mexico 
were  completely  brought  under  Catholic  re- 
ligious influence.  The  story  of  the  Jesuit 
relations  in  North  America  is  not  only  one 
of  the  longest,  it  is  also  one  of  the  most 
picturesque  and  interesting  chapters  in  the 
history  of  the  continent.  Even  New  Eng- 
land, which  we  think  of  as  for  generations  the 
home  of  Protestantism,  was  the  scene  of 
Catholic  activity  before  the  Pilgrims  landed 
on  Cape  Cod.  A  French  expedition  under 
de  Monts  planted  a  colony  upon  Neutral 
Island  in  the  Saint  Croix  River  in  1604,  and 


24    INHERITANCE  AND  EXPERIMENT 

in  1608  Jesuits  established  on  Mount  Desert 
Island  a  settlement  which  was  joined  in  16 13 
by  a  number  of  fishermen.  Both  settlements 
were  destroyed  by  Sir  Samuel  Argall  who 
forcibly  removed  the  inhabitants  to  James- 
town, Virginia,  as  prisoners.  The  extreme 
southwestern  parts  of  the  United  States, 
wholly  Catholic  at  first,  are  largely  so  now  ; 
while  the  Catholic  parts  of  Canada  remain 
among  the  most  loyal  adherents  of  the 
Church. 

Nevertheless  Protestantism  became  ascend- 
ant not  only  in  North  America,  but  in  a 
sense  in  the  Western  Hemisphere,  because 
it  was  the  faith  of  those  colonists  who  most 
rapidly  accumulated  wealth  and  most  effect- 
ively organized  political  power.  Moreover, 
it  was  the  non-conformist  and  dissenting 
Protestants,  the  radicals  of  Protestantism,  who 
imparted  distinctive  quality  to  the  religious 
life  of  the  United  States.  There  is  an  element 
in  our  population  which  is  fond  of  claiming 
that  one  group  of  non-conforming  Protestants 
in  particular,  namely  the  Puritans  of  New 
England,  exerted  a  wider  and  more  enduring 
influence  upon  our  habits  of  thought,  our 
moral  standards,  our  habits  of  life  and  our 
ideals  than  any  other.  If  this  claim  is  not 
pressed  too  far  it  may  be  admitted ;  but  it  is 


INHERITANCE  AND  EXPERIMENT    25 

important  to  remember  that  the  religious 
zeal  of  New  England  and  the  New  Eng- 
lander's  habit  of  independent  thinking  in 
religious  matters  have  had  other  conse- 
quences also.  Some  of  them  have  brought 
troublesome  complications  into  our  political 
development;  others  have  influenced  our 
intellectual  and  social  life.  North  America 
has  been  a  fertile  soil  for  the  development  of 
new  religions,  conspicuous  among  them 
Mormonism  and  Christian  Science,  and  these 
can  usually  be  traced  to  New  England 
sources. 

Also  it  is  necessary  to  remember  that  new 
forces  are  now  altering  both  the  relative  ex- 
tent and  the  relative  influence  of  Protestant- 
ism and  Catholicism  in  the  religious  life  of 
North  America.  Not  only  in  the  great  cities 
of  the  North,  once  almost  wholly  Protestant, 
has  the  Catholic  Church  increased  its  mem- 
bership and  influence  with  amazing  rapidity, 
but  in  town  after  town  of  rural  New  England 
the  cross  of  the  Catholic  Church  overlooks 
the  white  spire  of  the  Congregational  struc- 
ture. 

Whatever  may  be  the  future  of  Protestant- 
ism in  North  America,  and  quite  certainly  it 
will  be  both  qualitatively  and  quantitatively 
different  from  its  past,  it  has  set  going  in- 


26    INHERITANCE  AND  EXPERIMENT 

fluences  that  will  persist.  Farthest  reaching 
of  these  perhaps  is  American  interest  in  non- 
Christian  peoples  and  their  destinies.  This 
interest  is  unique,  and  it  must  be  understood 
by  one  who  would  seriously  study  the  prob- 
able future  relations  between  America  and 
the  Eastern  Hemisphere.  It  is  distinct  from 
commercial  interest,  and  more  than  once  it 
has  been  antagonistic  to  both  business  and 
political  policies.  It  is  well  backed  up  by 
knowledge.  Probably  it  is  not  exaggeration 
to  say  that  nowhere  else  have  so  many  aver- 
age individuals  really  known  so  much  about 
the  people  of  other  lands,  their  social  organi- 
zation, their  way  of  life,  their  religious  ideas, 
as  in  America.  Mixed  with  error,  of  course, 
this  knowledge  has  been  fostered  by  mis- 
sionary zeal  and  has  been  disseminated 
through  missionary  agencies. 

That  the  zeal  itself  is  humanitarian  is 
proven  by  radical  changes  in  the  character 
of  missionary  activity  in  recent  years.  With 
the  decay  of  theology,  with  the  increase  of 
scientific  knowledge,  with  the  gaining  of  a 
truer  knowledge  of  the  peoples  with  whom 
the  missionaries  have  laboured,  effort  has 
been  diverted  in  a  measure  from  the  older 
purpose  to  convert  the  heathen,  to  newer 
tasks  of  secular  education,  medical  service, 


INHEEITANCE  AND  EXPEEIMENT    27 

sanitation  and  the  betterment  of  economic 
conditions.  The  zeal  itself  persists,  and  the 
practical  politician  who  supposes  that  our  re- 
lations with  the  so-called  backward  peoples 
will  be  determined  altogether  by  commercial 
and  political  developments,  does  not  know 
the  thought  and  the  feeling  of  millions  of  our 
so-called  plain  Americans  who  have  votes, 
and  whose  relation  to  public  opinion  and  na- 
tional policy  is  not  negligible. 

It  was  humane  feeling  fortified  by  the 
moral  earnestness  of  Puritanism  and  fired 
by  missionary  ardour  that  carried  forward 
the  anti-slavery  movement  and  began  the 
work  of  negro  education,  and  that  has  con- 
tributed a  powerful  moral  support  to  a  liberal 
immigration  policy.  In  short,  it  has  been  a 
specific  kind  of  humanitarianism,  it  has  been 
a  missionary  humanitarianism  of  Puritan 
antecedents  that  has  established  in  the  senti- 
ment, opinion  and  policy  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States  the  doctrine,  or  the  dogma,  if 
that  is  a  better  word  for  it,  of  the  equality 
and  the  brotherhood  of  human  beings  of  all 
nationalities  and  of  all  races. 

The  Puritan  town  communities  of  New 
England  began  the  most  persistent  and 
probably  the  most  important  experiment 
ever  made  in  the  popular  control  of  practical 


28    INHEEITANCE  AND  EXPERIMENT 

morals.  Ancient  and  modern  nations  alike 
have  brought  within  the  scope  of  their  crimi- 
nal law  a  great  many  acts  which  properly 
are  sins  or  vices  rather  than  crimes.  But 
outside  of  the  United  States  the  inclusion  of 
sins  and  vices  among  the  mala  prohibita  of 
statute  law  has  been  at  the  dictation  of  a  rul- 
ing class  which  has  held  itself  superior  in 
character  and  intelligence,  as  in  wealth  and 
in  power.  The  object  has  been  to  impose 
upon  the  governed  rules  that  would  ensure 
not  only  social  order  and  general  well-being, 
but  also  the  supremacy  of  the  dominant  es- 
tate. In  the  Puritan  towns  of  Massachusetts 
Bay  there  was  a  dominating  group,  but  it 
was  not  a  ruling  class  intrenched  in  privilege, 
and  as  the  community  became  miscellaneous 
and  democratic  the  habit  of  making  private 
conduct  an  affair  of  public  concern  persisted. 
I  am  not  aware  that  this  transfer  of  power 
to  dictate  morals  from  the  classes  and  the 
potentates  to  the  masses  has  ever  been  de- 
scribed as  a  revolution.  It  did  not  come 
with  observation,  and  the  violent  took  noth- 
ing by  storm ;  but  it  was  a  revolution  in  fact, 
one  of  the  most  momentous  revolutions  in 
history.  Its  consequences  have  been  and 
are  far  reaching.  They  are  seen  now  in 
every   commonwealth  of  the  Union.     Year 


INHERITANCE  AND  EXPERIMENT    29 

upon  year  legislatures  busy  themselves  with 
all  possible  questions  of  individual  behaviour. 
Throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
nation  the  whole  public  has  become  censor 
and  arbiter.  Motives  have  changed  to  some 
extent.  Industrialism  prevails  now,  and  the 
efficiency  idea  is  applied  to  personal  conduct 
as  to  shop  and  office  methods.  So  the  sweep 
of  the  prohibition  movement,  to  cite  a  con- 
spicuous instance,  is  not  to  be  accounted  for 
by  any  one  thought  or  conviction.  Religious 
and  moral  zeal  have  entered  into  it ;  but  so 
also  have  economic  and  political  considera- 
tions. The  important  fact  to  remember  is 
that  this  and  all  related  developments  of 
social  control  through  the  organs  of  govern- 
ment are  manifestations  of  a  popular  purpose 
and  an  essentially  democratic  method  which 
had  their  first  important  tryout  in  the  Puritan 
town  communities  of  New  England. 

These  observations  upon  our  zeal  to  en- 
lighten and  our  determination  to  walk  up- 
rightly bring  us  to  a  necessary  word  upon 
the  American  experiment  in  education.  Re- 
ligious convictions  and  moral  intentions  have 
been  in  all  lands  until  recently  the  propulsive 
forces  of  education.  The  American  public 
school  therefore  has  hitherto  been  identified 
with  Protestantism,  as  the  parochial  school 


30    INHEEITANCB  AND  EXPERIMENT 

with  Catholicism.  But  with  the  broadening 
of  Protestantism  into  democracy  and  the 
Catholic  contention  that  democracy  in  things 
secular  is  compatible  with  loyalty  to  the 
Church  in  matters  of  faith,  the  public  school, 
and  the  higher  educational  institutions  im- 
posed upon  it,  have  become  an  expression  of 
the  democratic  demand  for  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity. That  it  is  the  duty  of  the  state  to 
give  to  every  child  a  decent  start  in  life  is 
the  reason  that  ninety-nine  voters  out  of  a 
hundred  would  now  assign,  if  questioned 
why  taxpayers  should  provide  not  only  ele- 
mentary instruction  but  also  high  schools 
and  normal  schools,  agricultural  colleges, 
special  training  and  vocational  schools,  and 
state  universities. 

Yet  because  the  public  school  has  his- 
torically been  associated  with  Protestantism, 
it  has  been  in  a  sense  a  challenge  to  the 
Catholic  Church  to  establish  parochial  schools. 
On  the  other  hand,  since  it  has  necessarily 
been  undenominational,  the  public  school  has 
afforded  excuse  for  the  establishment  of  de- 
nominational schools  by  various  Protestant 
sects.  And  because  it  has  been  a  centre  of 
assimilation  and  an  effective  influence  for 
equality  and  fraternity,  the  public  school  has 
offered  reason  for  the  establishment  of  costly 


INHEEITANCE  AND  EXPEEIMENT    31 

private  schools  by  the  rich  and  socially  am- 
bitious. 

It  may  confidently  be  predicted  that  no 
one  of  these  diversions  of  interest  and  re- 
sources, nor  all  of  them  together,  will  seri- 
ously limit  the  further  development  of  our 
vast  scheme  of  public  education  in  the  United 
States.  The  democratic  forces  are  strong. 
The  vitalizing  of  instruction  by  developing  it 
from  the  child's  relation  to  economic  occupa- 
tion and  to  society  with  attention  to  voca- 
tional guidance  and  to  citizenship  promises 
to  create  a  type  of  public  school  that  will  so 
appeal  to  all  classes,  to  men  of  all  moral  and 
religious  preferences,  that  it  will  have  the 
common  and  enthusiastic  support  of  the 
whole  community.  It  will  not  sacrifice  the 
spontaneous  nature  of  the  child  to  formalism, 
nor  destroy  convictions  in  the  interest  of  a 
system.  It  will  not  level  and  equalize  by 
cutting  ofi[  natural  superiority,  but  it  will  es- 
tablish values  based  upon  capacities  and 
abilities,  rather  than  upon  the  adventitious 
circumstances  of  birth,  wealth  and  social  con- 
nection. 

The  social  forces  operative  in  American 
life  that  so  far  we  have  considered  are  ener- 
gies of  collective  endeavour.  They  express 
and  they  strengthen  community  of  interest 


32    INHEEITANCE  AND  EXPERIMENT 

They  create  solidarity.  Contending  with 
them  are  individualistic  impulses,  grown 
strong  and  assertive  in  America,  through 
two  centuries  of  frontier  experiences. 

The  spirit  of  adventure  that  entered  into 
discovery  and  colonization  could  not  spend 
itself  quickly  or  easilyc  It  has  seemed  ex- 
haustless  and  even  now  is  little  abated.  It 
carried  the  young  men  of  the  seaboard  set- 
tlements westward  along  the  valleys  of  the 
James  and  the  Cumberland,  the  Mohawk  and 
the  Susquehanna.  Beyond  the  Alleghanies, 
through  the  valleys  of  the  Ohio  and  the  Mis- 
sissippi, across  the  plains  and  the  Great  Basin 
to  the  coasts  of  the  West,  they  made  their 
way,  pioneers,  self-sufficient,  each  man  de- 
pendent upon  his  rifle  and  himself.  Eman- 
cipated from  the  good  and  the  bad  of  com- 
munity life,  he  and  his  progeny  became  im- 
patient of  social  restraint.  A  spirit  developed 
in  them  antagonistic  to  any  communal  pur- 
pose to  regulate  individual  conduct  in  the 
interest  of  the  social  whole.  They  created  a 
new  type  of  democracy,  the  individualistic  ; 
almost  we  might  call  it  the  frontier  anarch- 
istic. Its  character  and  tendency  were  re- 
vealed to  the  Atlantic  coast  communities  in 
the  war  of  1812,  and  politically  it  came  into 
power  with  the  election  of  Andrew  Jackson 


INHERITANCE  AND  EXPERIMENT    33 

and  the  organization  of  the  Jacksonian 
Democracy,  different  from  the  Jeffersonian 
Democracy  in  almost  everything  but  name. 

From  the  frontier  character  and  its  tend- 
encies have  sprung  much  of  that  individual 
initiative,  and  that  self-reliance  which  have 
created  the  American  industrial  system  and 
to  a  great  extent  have  controlled  American 
political  policies.  In  all  the  world  there 
never  has  been  anything  quite  comparable 
to  the  individualistic,  voluntary  organization 
of  business  enterprise  in  America.  It  has 
built  a  railway  system  greater  than  any  rail- 
way system  constructed  with  all  the  resources 
of  government  in  the  Old  World.  It  has 
created  industrial  corporations  and  federa- 
tions of  corporations  larger  and  more  power- 
ful than  any  one  of  half  of  the  nations  of  the 
earth.  At  times  i  '•  has  well-nigh  become  the 
sovereign  back  of  and  controlling  the  consti- 
tutional polity  of  the  United  States. 


Ill 

THE  DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIAL 
EFFICIENCY 

HE  who  has  observed  the  intent  and 
the  tendency  of  the  two  great  groups 
of  influences  that  now  have  been 
indicated — who  has  discriminated  the  soli- 
daristic  and  the  individuaHstic  forces  in 
America — is  prepared  to  understand  the 
nature  and  to  estimate  the  value  of  another 
characteristically  American  contribution  to 
social  progress.  On  a  scale  unprecedented, 
the  will  of  the  individual  to  follow  his  own 
intent  in  all  the  freedom  of  wilderness  or 
plain  has  been  asserted.  On  a  scale  not  less 
vast  the  will  of  the  democratic  community  to 
control  and  to  regulate  in  the  interest  of 
general  well-being  has  been  manifested.  It 
has  created  a  social  pressure  quite  as  strong 
and  a  public  regulation  as  extended  as  one 
may  find  in  any  imperial  state.  So  it  ap- 
pears that  we  are  working  out  perhaps  for 
the  world  a  decisive  experiment  in  the  conflict 
between  organized  societary  power  and  a 
determined  individualism. 
34 


DISCOVEEY  OF  SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY    35 

Is  the  experiment  presumably  constructive  ? 
Will  it  probably  bring  about  a  higher  or- 
ganization of  human  activities  than  any 
hitherto  known  ?  Will  it  make  social  control 
effective  for  the  production  of  efficiency  rather 
than  for  the  restraint  of  enthusiasm  and 
initiative  ?  Will  it  in  the  end  create  the 
finest  type  of  that  individuality  which  is  a 
different  thing  from  egotistic  and  lawless 
individualism  ?  Perhaps  most  Americans 
still  have  confused  ideas  upon  the  subject  of 
social  responsibility.  They  think  of  better- 
ment programs  now  as  socialism,  now  as 
newfangled  reforms,  now  as  an  overgrowth 
of  philanthropy,  and  now  as  mere  mischiev- 
ous meddling.  They  "  suppose  "  that  they 
*'  ought "  to  be  interested  in  tenement  house 
commissions,  anti-tuberculosis  committees, 
laws  in  restraint  of  the  labour  of  children 
and  women,  workmen's  compensation  laws, 
minimum  wage  laws,  plans  for  the  preven- 
tion of  unemployment,  schemes  for  the  relief 
of  destitution  and  measures  for  the  ameliora- 
tion of  poverty.  These  things  are,  indeed, 
aspects  of  betterment,  but  in  themselves  they 
do  not  suggest  the  correlation  of  betterment 
with  efficiency,  and  of  efficiency  with  a  grow- 
ing sense  of  both  public  and  private  re- 
sponsibility.    That  this  linking  up  of  both 


36    DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY 

responsibility  and  efficiency  with  the  general 
welfare,  and  of  the  collective  phase  with  the 
individual  phase  of  all  these  things  is  the 
real  significance  of  any  betterment  program 
worthy  of  the  name  began  to  dawn  upon  us 
with  the  outbreak  of  the  European  war. 
Then  with  quick  apprehension  the  American 
mind  grasped  the  enormous  importance  of 
the  social  efficiency  program  which  Germany 
since  the  chancellorship  of  Prince  Bismarck 
has  remorselessly  been  putting  into  effect. 

Are  we  then  to  accept  a  German  view  of 
public  responsibility  for  universal  efficiency, 
and  in  this  matter,  at  least,  become  the 
imitator  rather  than  the  originator  and 
exemplar?  Perhaps  so  much  chastening  of 
our  pride  would  be  good  for  us,  but  whether 
that  be  so  or  no,  the  facts  of  history  preclude 
the  possibility.  It  is  time  that  Americans 
were  reminded  that  this  social-responsibility- 
efficiency-and-betterment  idea,  destined  more 
and  more  to  occupy  the  attention  of  serious 
men  and  women  of  every  continent,  is  not  a 
German  invention,  and  not  the  product  of 
any  other  European  nationality.  "In  spite 
of  all  temptations  to  belong  to  other  nations,'' 
the  man  who  scientifically  developed  it  and 
experimentally  tried  it  out  was  an  American. 
Next  after  Jonathan  Edwards  and  Benjamin 


DISCOVEEY  OF  SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY    37 

Franklin  he  was,  I  think,  the  greatest  Ameri- 
can. No  one  else  in  our  history  can  make 
out,  all  things  considered,  quite  so  good  a 
claim  to  the  third  place.  But  while  Edwards 
and  Franklin  are  remembered,  Benjamin 
Thompson  has  been  forgotten. 

The  story  of  his  early  life  in  Massachusetts 
and  New  Hampshire  and  of  the  circum- 
stances which  led  to  his  residence  in  Eng- 
land is  romantically  interesting,  but  too  long 
for  repetition  here.  Born  in  Woburn,  Massa- 
chusetts, in  1753,  a  country  school  teacher, 
proficient  in  mathematics  and  physics,  com- 
bining executive  ability  with  intellectual 
power,  at  thirty  years  of  age  he  was  a  Fellow 
of  the  Royal  Society,  had  held  the  office  of 
Under  Secretary  of  State  in  the  British  gov- 
ernment, was  a  lieutenant  colonel  in  the 
British  army,  and  had  received  the  honour  of 
knighthood.  Honourably  retired  from  the 
army  with  half  pay  for  life,  he  received  per- 
mission to  enter  the  service  of  the  Elector  of 
Bavaria.  Given  full  power  and  a  free  hand 
he  began  at  once  a  work  of  social  construc- 
tion—of economic  and  moral  synthesis-— 
which  was  new  in  conception  and  in  method, 
an  invention  (as  truly  as  the  products  of 
synthetic  chemistry  or  of  synthetic  biology 
are  inventions)  of  a  master  mind,  gifted  with 


38    DISCOVEEY  OF  SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY 

imagination,    and    disciplined    in    scientific 
habit. 

The  military  establishment  was  reorgan- 
ized. New  tactics  were  introduced,  new 
arms  and  ordinance  were  provided.  This 
measure  of  safety  achieved,  Thompson  turned 
his  attention  to  economic  conditions.  He 
drained  and  improved  the  waste  land  about 
Munich.  He  introduced  new  breeds  of  cattle 
and  horses.  He  constructed  improved  dwell- 
ings for  the  working  classes  and  provided  for 
them  a  practical  education,  the  education  that 
now,  after  a  hundred  years  of  half-hearted 
interest,  we  in  America  are  beginning  to  or- 
ganize under  the  names  **  industrial  training  " 
and  *'  vocational  guidance."  All  this  was 
preparation  ;  then  the  big  task  was  attacked 
and  achieved.  The  whole  land  of  Bavaria 
swarmed  with  beggars,  vagabonds  and 
thieves,  the  wastage  of  long  years  of  war. 
Thompson  made  the  assumption  that  organ- 
ized society  should  undertake  their  rehabil- 
itation and  discipline.  He  removed  them 
from  the  cities,  where  they  tended  to  congre- 
gate, and  provided  work  for  them,  but  he  did 
not  stop  there,  with  a  comfortable  sense  of 
duty  done.  He  saw  to  it  that  the  unem- 
ployed and  the  vagabonds  not  only  had 
work,  but  that  they  learned  how  to  work, 


DISCO VEEY  OF  SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY    39 

that  they  became  self-respecting  workers, 
morally  no  less  than  economically  reformed. 
In  fine,  he  achieved  the  so-called  impossible : 
he  made  the  inefBcient  efficient  and  self-sup- 
porting ;  he  abolished  and  thenceforth  pre- 
vented the  evils  of  idleness,  vagabondage  and 
pauperism  in  Bavaria. 

So  was  created  one-half,  the  non-political 
half,  of  Kultur,  that  wondrous  thing  which 
all  the  world  is  now  invited  to  admire.  The 
other  half,  the  political  half  of  Kultur,  is  a 
philosophy  and  a  habit,  a  habit  of  obeying 
without  question  or  protest  a  state  conceived 
as  absolute,  supreme  above  the  moral  law  as 
above  statute  and  decision.  Kultur  was  not 
made  in  Germany.  The  political  half  of  it  as 
everybody  knows  was  made  in  Italy,  and  was 
formulated  by  Machiavelli.  The  non-polit- 
ical half  of  it,  the  social  efficiency  half,  which 
all  the  world  will  yet  adopt  and  profit  by,  was 
made  in  Massachusetts  by  Puritan  faith,  con- 
science, frugality  and  toil,  and  was  taken  to 
Bavaria  by  Benjamin  Thompson. 

In  recognition  of  his  services  Thompson 
was  made  a  member  of  the  Bavarian  Council 
of  State,  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  General 
Staff,  and  Chief  of  the  Regency  in  the  ab- 
sence of  the  Elector.  In  1790  the  Elector 
became  Vicar  General   of  the   Empire   and 


40    DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY 

made  Thompson  a  Count  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire.  In  loyal  memory  of  the  New  Hamp- 
shire town  of  Rumford,  now  Concord,  where 
he  had  taught  school,  Thompson  chose  the 
designation  Count  Rumford.  Returning  for 
a  time  to  London,  he  founded  the  Royal  In- 
stitution and  made  Sir  Humphrey  Davy  its 
Professor  of  Chemistry.  In  1802  he  removed 
to  Paris  and  two  years  later  married  the 
widow  of  the  chemist  Lavoisier.  The  re- 
maining years  until  his  death  in  1814  were 
spent  at  Auteiul  in  completing  those  first  ex- 
perimental demonstrations  which  he  had  be- 
gun before  1798  of  the  fact  and  the  law  of 
the  conservation  of  energy  upon  which  the 
science  of  modern  physics  rests. 

Such  are  among  the  ideas,  the  practical 
purposes,  the  effective  methods  and  the  dis- 
coveries that  America  thus  far  has  contributed 
to  the  advancement  of  mankind.  Is  it  neces- 
sary to  say  in  so  many  words  that  they  are 
not  the  ideas,  the  discoveries,  the  purposes 
and  the  methods  that  make  for  war?  They 
are  constructive  and  socializing.  They  make 
for  peace. 


IV 

GETTING  ON  WITHOUT  KINGS 

TWO  more  of  our  American  ideas  re- 
main to  be  named,  and  these  also 
make  for  peace.  Perhaps  they  are 
more  interesting  to  the  multitude  than  are 
those  upon  which  we  have  dwelt  thus  far ; 
they  are  more  often  talked  about  and  more 
importance  is  generally  attached  to  them. 
It  would  be  hard  to  prove  that  they  are  more 
important  in  fact. 

Beginning  with  the  United  States,  imitated 
by  the  South  and  Central  American  coun- 
tries and  by  Mexico,  America  has  abolished 
kings  and  hereditary  rank.  It  is  republican 
in  name,  in  part  republican  in  fact.  By  some 
among  us  name  is  taken  for  fact  and  a  mag- 
ical virtue  is  assumed  to  reside  in  republican 
forms.  By  others  among  us,  an  imperfect 
realization  of  republican  ideals  is  taken  as 
proof  that  republican  forms  are  in  themselves 
of  no  value.  Somewhere  between  these  ex- 
tremes of  opinion  the  truth  may  probably  be 
found. 

41 


42       GETTING  ON  WITHOUT  KINGS 

It  is  not  a  small  thing  that  the  peoples  of 
two  continents  have  been  able  to  get  on 
without  kings  quite  as  well,  all  things  con- 
sidered, as  the  people  of  the  Eastern  Hemi- 
sphere have  been  getting  on  with  kings.  So 
long  as  people  can  get  on  without  kings, 
even  if  at  times  they  -get  on  badly,  they  are 
keeping  open  the  possibilities  of  social  evo- 
lution. One  of  two  things  necessarily  hap- 
pens in  the  circumstances.  Either  the  people 
in  general  feel  responsibility,  and  organize 
effective  cooperation,  in  which  case  they 
create  the  republican  state,  not  as  a  mere 
form,  but  as  a  great  reality  ;  or,  failing  to  do 
these  things,  they  attach  themselves  to  one 
or  another  political  adventurer  who  under- 
takes to  impose  his  rule  and  to  organize  a 
government.  This  is  dictatorship,  and  it  is 
by  no  means  necessarily  better  than  the  rule 
of  an  absolute  monarch,  but  it  has  one  ad- 
vantage. It  is  the  outcome  of  a  struggle 
which  closely  resembles  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence in  the  natural  world.  The  dictator 
falls  before  an  abler  rival.  Something  closely 
akin  to  natural  selection  goes  on,  and  per- 
haps no  other  process  could  so  rapidly  de- 
velop political  consciousness  and  political 
ability  in  a  people  not  yet  ready  for  true  self- 
government.     In   a  crude   way,  the   people 


GETTING  ON  WITHOUT  KINGS       43 

solve  their  own  problems.  From  their  own 
loins  they  generate  their  aristocracies  of  re- 
sourceful men,  intellectual  men,  artists  and 
inventors.  They  are  not  subject,  they  are 
not  vassal,  they  are  not  under  an  imposed 
tutelage.  Their  sense  of  responsibility  may 
be  undeveloped,  but  it  is  not  being  wantonly 
destroyed. 

Moreover,  kings  and  the  system  of  heredi- 
tary privilege  which  upholds  and  in  turn 
profits  by  them,  are  products  of  age-long 
militarism.  Kings  and  nobilities  have  lived 
by  militarism  and  have  accepted  it  as  a  di- 
vinely appointed  scheme  of  things.  Almost 
every  king  that  has  lived  has  expected  a  de- 
cisive war  in  his  reign  to  perpetuate  his 
name  and  his  glory.  He  has  planned  for  it, 
and  largely  has  lived  for  it.  To  expect  world 
peace  while  kings  continue  to  reign  is  to 
look  for  the  incredible.  The  desire  for  peace, 
the  hope  and  the  expectation  that  peace  may 
one  day  be  the  normal  order  of  civilized  man- 
kind are  products  of  popular  politics.  The 
interests  of  democracies,  even  of  nominal  re- 
publics, are  the  interests  of  peace.  So,  even 
if  we  cannot  say  that  the  Americas  through- 
out their  length  are  altogether  republican  in 
fact,  if  we  must  admit  that  they  are  not  yet 
in  any  good  sense  of  the  word  completely 


44       GETTING  ON  WITHOUT  KINGS 

democratic,  they  at  least  have  cut  loose  from 
kings  and  have  emerged  from  the  old  world 
atmosphere  of  war.  Increasingly  they  will 
voice  the  demand  for  peace. 

Last  among  these  interesting  and  perhaps 
fateful  complexes  of  ideas  that  have  arisen 
and  energetically  developed  in  America  must 
be  named  that  indefinite  but  vital  and  per- 
sisting policy  which  shapes  the  political  re- 
lations of  the  Western  Hemisphere  to  the 
rest  of  the  world.  This  policy  is  more  than 
the  Monroe  Doctrine.  Of  the  strict  import 
of  that  doctrine,  as  it  is  related  to  diplomatic 
history  and  to  international  law,  the  layman 
may  not  speak.  But  back  of  the  doctrine  are 
ideas  and  purposes  that  are  a  common  pos- 
session of  the  American  people.  About  it 
have  gathered  intentions  and  sentiments  that 
are  active  forces  in  public  opinion  and  in 
legislation.  Traditions  older  than  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine  are  factors.  Chief  among  these 
is  our  historical  attitude  towards  entangling 
alliances  with  European  nations,  which  was 
advised  in  Washington's  farewell  address. 

While,  therefore,  our  popular  reaction  to 
questions  of  foreign  policy  is  variable  within 
limits,  its  general  character  and  intent  are 
certain.  So  far  as  these  essentials  go,  it  can 
be  summed  up  in  homely  phrase.     We  have 


GETTING  ON  WITHOUT  KINGS       45 

much  good  business  to  attend  to.  We  have 
no  desire  to  meddle  with  our  neighbours. 
We  assume  that  they  do  not  wish  to  annoy 
us  or  to  interfere  with  us.  In  particular  we 
deprecate  political  interference  by  one  hemi- 
sphere in  the  affairs  of  the  other.  But  world- 
wide commercial  intercourse,  freedom  of 
travel,  the  interchange  of  thought,  generous 
response  to  any  call  for  help  in  time  of 
calamity  we  think  of  as  matters  of  course,  in 
all  proper  ways  to  be  extended. 

In  a  word,  we  say  that  the  proper  attitude 
of  nations  towards  one  another  is  like  the 
proper  attitude  of  individuals  towards  one 
another  in  good  society.  Diligent  in  busi- 
ness, they  should  observe  a  gracious  courtesy 
towards  one  another,  not  interfering,  not 
offering  too  much  advice ;  profiting  by  help- 
ful interchange  in  business,  in  thought,  in 
friendship,  they  should  cooperate,  as  oppor- 
tunity offers,  to  further  the  progress  of  man- 
kind. 


V 

TRYING  OUT  A  WORLD  SOCIETY 

CAN  generalizations  be  drawn  from  the 
foregoing  inventory  of  the  material 
and  spiritual  resources  of  the  West- 
ern Hemisphere,  its  contributions,  its  char- 
acter and  intentions  ?  Is  there  clear  indica- 
tion of  the  part  which  this  Hemisphere  is  to 
have  in  the  world  of  to-morrow  ?     Perhaps  I 

In  this  area  of  anthropological  and  social 
experimentation,  the  peoples  of  the  Western 
Hemisphere  for  three  centuries  have  been 
working  out  by  a  trial  and  error  process  the 
conceptions,  the  forms,  the  habits,  the  pur- 
poses and  the  policies  of  a  world  society. 
Here  are  all  races,  all  nationalities.  They 
meet  and  mingle  not  on  ideally  equal  terms, 
but  in  a  closer  approximation  to  equality  of 
opportunity,  with  a  better  knowledge  of  one 
another,  with  less  of  prejudice,  on  the  whole, 
than  ever  before  in  human  history.  Casting 
ofi  hereditary  rule  and  the  tutelage  of  heredi- 
tary aristocracies,  these  composite  peoples 
have  here  permitted  a  relatively  untrammeled 
46 


TEYING  OUT  A  WOELD  SOCIETY    47 

struggle  of  political  forces,  confident  that  in 
the  long  run  the  fit  survive  and  that  the 
people  acquire  political  consciousness  and 
aptitude.  Refusing  to  acknowledge  them- 
selves creatures  of  an  absolute  state,  they 
have  created  the  responsible  state^  authorita- 
tive and  strong,  but  subject  like  themselves 
to  the  moral  law  and  a  decent  regard  for  the 
opinions  of  mankind.  Respecting  them- 
selves and  attentive  to  their  own  affairs,  they 
respect  all  nations  and  are  respected. 

Free  and  secure  in  the  responsible  state, 
multitudes  of  human  beings  in  America  have 
learned  to  rely  on  themselves,  to  assume  in- 
itiative, to  organize  and  to  achieve.  They 
have  learned  the  imperative  necessity  of  edu- 
cation and  enlightenment.  They  have  de- 
veloped individual  and  cooperative  efficiency. 
They  are  awakening  to  the  possibilities  of  a 
social  democracy  in  which  opportunity  for 
all  shall  be  embraced  by  most,  in  which  every 
individual  shall  be  assured  of  safety  if  he  be 
not  himself  reckless,  of  competence  if  he  will 
earn  it,  of  friendship  if  he  will  accept  it,  of 
appreciation  if  he  make  contribution  however 
small  to  the  well-being  of  mankind. 

So  reacting  and  so  organized,  the  peoples 
of  America  are  making  prodigious  economic 
strides.     Their  industries  have  grown  beyond 


48    TEYING  OUT  A  WORLD  SOCIETY 

precedent.  Now  they  export  commodities. 
Soon  they  will  export  capital.  They  will 
share  in  the  financial  control  of  world  affairs. 
Then  the  Western  Hemisphere  not  only  will 
wish  peace  ;  it  will  have  the  power  to  make 
its  wish  effective. 


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